Titan Takedown

Recruitment

We walked out of our office to recruit the Alfredsons to aid us in the assassination of Stalin.

"It'd be best if Sorcha and your kids weren't here for this, Nikolas."

"Daddy, what are your friends going to say? Do we have to leave the room?"

"Eliza and Izzy, why don't you go play outside and Sorcha can watch over you two?"

"Okay, Daddy."

The children ran out, dragging Sorcha by her arms.

"Take a seat, and we'll talk with you. Preferably while the lot are engaged."

We sat down as did they.

"Nikolas and Ena, we need your help. My hunch was right and we've been kicked from the Order but we can't leave before we ice Stalin."

"I thought that we agreed that you wouldn't make any puns, Motya, and now you've made a double pun."

"I couldn't help it. It was too good to pass up."

Nikolas whistled sharply.

"Oi! If you don't answer some of our questions, we aren't going to be doing anything for you lot. What is this Order you keep mentioning?"

"Our Order or our former Order was founded about 800 years ago in Jerusalem to restore order and equality to Europe and the Middle East during the Crusades. We moved our main Headquarters wherever equality was needed most. We did not seek equality like this country back in the February and October Revolutions. Not economic equality but equality where all are treated equally and no party has special privileges, like both men and women are in a military draft, no ethnicity has expectations raised or lowered to be accepted in a job or school, things like that."

"Ya are off your nut if ya think that will work. Ya are bein' a tad extreme like a header. It'll take yonks to git it workin'."

"That may be true but, in my opinion, it's better to have an impossible dream with smaller goals along the way than to have one goal that is easily fulfilled because, you'll have nothing left to accomplish with an easy goal and you'll always have more to do with the impossible dream."

"Best of British, Don Quixote. Now, how much will you pay us if we do this?"

"I will give you two of those stones I was talking about earlier. One of them will aid your shadow control and the other will help Ena with her deoxygenation ability."

"You're diddling us, then. If you're going to bribe us, at least make the bung proper. Add 40,000 rubles to your deal or we walk."

"40,000?!" I barley held back the urge to yell. "Now you're the one who's ripping us off. Nobody but the elite of this country can do that. The best we can do is 10,000 and that's pushing it."

"30,000 rubles."

"15,000"

"20,000"

"17,500"

"Good enough. Give us the money and the stones now and we'll help you."

"Negotiatin' with him is like dealin' with an Arab trader for his salt while he's low on funds during Ramadan."

"You'll get it after we do the job."

"Give us the money before the job and the stones afterwards."

"The stones now and the money after the job."

"I suppose we can do that. Do you want to move forward with that plan, Ena?"

"I would've done it for less so let's go with your plan."

"What would you have charged, Ena?" I asked.

"Never mind that, Motya. We have this deal."

"Fine. Let me get the stones."

I left and got the stones out of the leather pouch and gazed into them for a while. Nikolas's stone was dark black with an occasional sparkle within. Ena's stone was sky blue with a light green swirl and as sparkly as the ocean. Even though I would be losing these two, I could always buy some from the black market. Miron came into the office to speak to me.

"We can't pay them that much money, Motya. We don't have it nor can we get the funds from the grandmaster. In addition, they can't use those stones because they don't know the olden language."

"They didn't say that they wanted to use teh stones and I said I would give them stones that would increase their power. I didn't say that I'd tell them how to use it. We can steal the money from Stalin's war chest and from his allies after we kill him."

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